by Writer's Edge

Created on: May 15, 2008   Last Updated: May 16, 2008

Here's a wonderful arts and crafts project that you and your children or students can work on for a long time. First you will need a notebook and plastic pages that go inside notebooks to preserve them. Second you will need paper and magic markers or pens. Third you need to save the wrappers from candy bars, energy or health bars, and potato chip or other snack bags.

Rinse out the items you wish to recycle and dry them. Then decide on the project for the day. How will you recycle these items? The first day could be by using a hole punch and making confetti. Make your confetti and glue it to a piece of paper. Write what you did on the paper and insert it into the protective sleeve plastic page. Then put it inside the notebook.

The second day could be making confetti again and this time gluing around the outside of the page to create a picture frame. Then write inside what you did. You can make another one and insert a picture to give it to a friend as a gift. The picture could be of you, the friend the two of you, an animal you both admire, etc.

The third day could be to use a pencil on the reverse side and draw a picture. This indentation can be the forerunner of embossing. Turn the picture over and see how it looks. Glue or tape your picture to a paper, write what you did and insert into the plastic sleeve.

The fourth day you could draw pictures, cut them out, glue or tape them to the picture and write what you did. You could create individual pictures or entire scenes.

The fifth day, you could create a card with not only a picture, but a saying or poem inside. Maybe you could wish someone well.

The sixth day, you could cut different colored strips and weave them to make a bag. Then glue cloth inside the bag. You could even roll strips or braid them to make handles. That could be kept inside the plastic sleeve and another one made and used. A wallet or pocketbook could be tried next. That could be in the notebook for the seventh day.

The eighth day, a bracelet could be created by rolling strips into string and braiding or tying by knots or by the method we used to use as kids to do with gum wrappers, a folding and intersecting. It could be a friendship bracelet or a wrist chain.

The ninth day, the different colors could be combined for a collage or different pictures made and glued to a page.

The tenth day, you could paint and tape pictures or draw, do some kind of mixed media with recycled cloth.

You can continue doing this for as many art projects as you and your child, children or students can invent. The wonderful thing about this is that the projects can be kept in this notebook forever. No throwing projects away which hurts the child's self-esteem and confuses the child as to the worth of art. Also the neat thing is, you aren't reusing to throw away later, you are reusing indefinitely. All the projects are kept in one neat, tidy place for future reference. Most importantly, this child will have these projects for when he or she has a child or works with one.

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